Find us on

'I need a wee, Mum!' Not in our toilets, says Iceland

5 year old not allowed to use staff toilet in store despite pleas from mum and the threat of a wet floor...

Have you ever been out shopping with your child and they tug on your sleeve to say they must go to the toilet, right this second? Well, that's what happened to one mum when she was shopping at Iceland with her 5-year-old son and 18-month-old daughter.

There are no public toilets in the Iceland store in Deal, Kent. Knowing her son desperately needed the toilet, the mum-of-2 asked a supervisor if he could use the staff loo. She was told no due to "health and safety" reasons.

"I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t an emergency, and it was," she told Kent Online. "What if he’d wet himself in the aisles? How could they justify that on health and safety grounds?"

She then explained the situation to the manager and was told to use the nearest public toilets instead. "At this point, my son was getting quite uptight," she said. "The manager blatantly said no again, to which I protested that he was a child. I even suggested they escort us there, but it was still no.

"After all this, I had to just leave my shopping and get him to the nearest toilet as quick as possible."

Once home, the mum wrote to Iceland's head office to complain – and the company has now sent a reminder to all staff to use sensitivity and common sense when a customer asks to use the conveniences.

"We do have health-and-safety rules that limit access to the back areas of our stores where the staff toilets are located. However, we shall remind our managers that these need to be interpreted with common sense and sensitivity," an Iceland spokeswoman said.

So now you know... if your child gets an urgent need to wee in an Iceland store.

Have your kids ever been caught short while out shopping? Supermarkets are the 5th most common places to have a wee accident according to our potty training survey. Have you ever asked to use staff loos? Let us know in the comments below.